Compassion, Consolation, Company
by worksmart
Summary: Set around episode 2-3 of season 5. What does Chase do while Cameron is visiting Wilson? Gen fic.


He's hunched over a table in a bar across town from his apartment, staring glumly into a basket of fries soaked in oil that tastes re-used and won't settle properly in his stomach. He ate maybe a handful when he ordered them, and has spent an hour now watching the ketchup slowly congeal across the rest.

Cameron's on a play-date with Wilson. He always says he doesn't mind driving her and waiting, but really he's just there trying to feel some part of this messed up pity party they've kept going for weeks, now. Chase doesn't get it; he doesn't see the point in mourning the dead if you're never going to let them die. For Wilson it's been a couple of months, which is probably understandable. But Cameron? She's raking over memories that should have been buried with her husband years ago, and she says she's doing it to help but he's never seen her eyes shine brighter than when he picks her up afterwards, and that can't all be blamed on the tears.

Hard not to feel, after all that mutual consolation, that she must find it hard having to go home with the consolation prize.

The straw in his third soda has been chewed to the point of unusability by the time the bell above the door jingles and someone else pushes their way into the purposefully dim hole in the wall. It's a bright day, but drapes across the windows render the place a better nursing home for hangovers. Chase observes this with a cold nostalgia.

It's not Cameron. He raises his eyebrows in silent question as Wilson settles into the other side of the booth where he was expecting his girlfriend, bright and beautiful in her pain. "Well, you certainly picked a cheery place." Wilson says, and Chase can hear the forced normality in his tone, and the rasp around the edges where his voice has broken not long ago. He tilts his chin up, doubting 'cheery' was anyone's objective for the day.

"It was convenient." he shrugs, holding up a warning hand a couple of seconds too late, "And those are cold."

"And rancid." Wilson agrees, pulling a face around his bite of french fry. "There's a coffee shop just across the road. As far as I'm aware most of what they serve is in fact edible."

Chase nods, which could be a thank-you but is actually not much more than an acknowledgement, and examines his fingernails. By the time he's come up with something conversational enough to say to the man who has just spent the afternoon crying on his girlfriend, Wilson is talking again.

"Cameron was called in. I put her in a cab, assuming there's no sense in both of you going back there on your day off."

"Nice of you." He smooths his hands over his jeans, a prelude to getting up. One palm settles on the pager at his belt. There are only two reasons to be called in to the ER, one of them being the kind of drama that summons all hands to the deck, and particularly hands like his, to vie for space in overcrowded operating rooms. The other reason, for a department head, is an administrative crisis. Those he doesn't have to worry about.

After a long enough pause the silence assures him it's the latter. Emergency paperwork. He doesn't know how she can stand it, except that she's always had a talent for the things that he finds mindnumbing. Admin, research papers, compassion.

Across the table, there's something raw and wide open under the thin veneer of sociability Wilson's put on to leave the house, and Chase wants nothing more than to get away from it. He worries at his lower lip and continues, "I parked outside your place. If you'd called, you could have saved yourself the round trip."

"Oh, I wanted to pick up a paper." Wilson says, and for the first time Chase notices the day's headlines splayed out on the seat beside him, "Besides, I don't mind the company."

Company. Wilson smiles around the word in a way that's just a little too urgently friendly to pass between two people who, despite five years professional acquaintance, really don't know each other that well. Chase bites his lip again to disguise the wince and the flinch at something twisting too tight inside him. "Sure. Shall we go, then?"

He grabs a handful of chips from one of the bowls on the bar as they head out. It's early enough that he can be assured not too many hands dug through the selection before him, and he uses them as a delaying tactic, giving himself something to do other than talk as they cover ground on the few blocks back to Wilson's place. Wilson and Amber's. Chase had liked her. She'd been a rottweiler in lipstick, but she was honest about it, and he recognised something kindred in her desperation to come out on top of the heap. He'd even found the domineering bitch routine somewhat attractive; there was nothing wrong with assertive women.

So he'd liked her. What happened was a tragedy in a place where every day was tragic for someone. It was sad. It's always sad, but he isn't about to dwell on it now. He isn't dwelling on being forced to leave House a near vegetable on Wilson's whim, either. Fair's fair.

He keeps pace easily with Wilson's slightly wider gait, no longer accustomed to keeping a careful step behind his superiors. Brushing the salt from his empty hands, he pushes his fingers back through hair that's edging his collar, now. It's longer than he likes it, if he's honest, but he keeps it that way for the same reason he forgets to shave several days in a row now and then, and rarely breaks out any of his old shirts and ties. Because he's allowed. Because he's making some kind of statement. And if he's considered that it's slightly pathetic to be making a statement about freedom to someone he's supposed to be free from, well, he's learned to live with the irony.

He hasn't considered that he might be making a statement about freedom to someone who's been dead for two years now, because for the most part he refuses to think about that person at all. His grief had been private, or so he'd thought. His screw-ups had been shared with his colleagues, bosses and a stony faced disciplinary panel, but his grief had been then, is still now locked away. Company, in sorrow, is an anathema.

"So, when do you start at the new place?" Chase is surprised to find his own voice breaking the silence first. Tongue swiping anxiously across dry lips, he glances sidelong at Wilson. Keep it to smalltalk and they'll get by just fine.

"Soon, soon. There's still notice to be worked out, and I'm taking some time to familiarise myself with the cases I'll be taking on, but yes, nose to the grindstone again soon enough." Wilson is doing his best to sound like he's ready. He doesn't.

"Not carrying anyone over from your old practice?"

"I think it's best if I make a clean break."

"Right." Chase nods, because he understands the sentiment, the reasons, and then continues before he's given enough thought to the wisdom of doing so, "Except it never is, is it? He's not about to let you go, for a start."

It's Wilson's turn to find the conversation uncomfortable, a fact he does a poor job of concealing. His fingers curl tight enough that his knuckles whiten, and Chase is willing to bet he'd find the crescent moon marks of nails dug into his palm. "He isn't being given a choice."

"Doesn't matter. House doesn't see options, he sees things going his way by whatever winding, manipulative route he has to take to get there. You know that." Chase shoves his hands in his pockets, counting the cars parked along the sidewalk on the lookout for his own. Nice cars. Nice area. "When he's obsessing over something he doesn't care if it takes him twelve years, or if he has to get it wrong a hundred times to get the answer he wants. He still gets it."

"Not this time." Wilson says, and the vehemence in the words makes Chase turn and study him. They're a few paces from Wilson's building and his car now, so they've both got escape routes if they need them. Chase shakes his head.

"You can have all the resolve in the world not to care. You can think you're doing good, because it's been a month, or a year, or two years and you've barely thought about him at all. You can tell yourself you're better for him being out of your life, and you can be completely right about that, and then one day he'll show up out of the blue and throw everything off kilter again. The easiest thing to do would be to give it up now and spare yourself the wait."

Wilson makes a study of his shoes, shoulders hunched up defensively enough for Chase to feel almost guilty about delivering the blow. Finally he replies, quiet but firm. "I don't need things to be easy."

"I know." Chase shrugs and smiles, "You were friends too damn long for anyone to think that."

Huffing out what could almost be taken for a laugh, Wilson shakes his head and looks up again. Chase tilts his head fractionally in the direction of his car, a silent offer to leave.

"Would you like to come in for a beer?" Wilson asks, instead.

Chase isn't good at outward compassion. It's one of the many reasons he tells himself he'd never have cut it as a priest but suits surgery well; far better to break the news to grieving families than to have to console them over it. He doesn't want a share in someone else's sorrow when he's got enough of his own to keep at bay. He doesn't want to swap personal stories in a chess game of maudlin one-upmanship, because he doesn't swap personal stories at all (and he still has his tonsils).

Beer, though. Just beer and a little mindless viewing of whatever Wilson's got on the TiVo, "Beer sounds good."

He turns away from his car and follows Wilson up the steps to his apartment. He's got nothing else to do for the afternoon, no place else to be. So maybe being company won't be that bad.


End file.
